e was no use in looking
beyond the confines of the Federal party for any public sentiment
worth considering. He had serious doubts also as to the advisability
of having the opponents of the government in the army, and wrote to
McHenry on September 30, 1798, that brawlers against the government in
certain parts of Virginia had suddenly become silent and were seeking
commissions in the army. "The motives ascribed to them are that in
such a situation they would endeavor to divide and contaminate the
army by artful and seditious discourses, and perhaps at a critical
moment bring on confusion. What weight to give to these conjectures
you can judge as well as I. But as there will be characters enough
of an opposite description who are ready to receive appointments,
circumspection is necessary. Finding the resentment of the people
at the conduct of France too strong to be resisted, they have in
appearance adopted their sentiments, and pretend that, notwithstanding
the misconduct of the government has brought it upon us, yet if an
invasion should take place, it will be found that _they_ will be among
the first to defend it. This is their story at all elections and
election meetings, and told in many instances with effect." He wrote
again in the same strain to McHenry, on October 21: "Possibly no
injustice would be done, if I were to proceed a step further, and give
it as an opinion that most of the candidates [for the army] brought
forward by the opposition members possess sentiments similar to their
own, and might poison the army by disseminating them, if they were
appointed." In this period of danger, when the country was on the
verge of war, the attitude of the opposition gave Washington much food
for thought because it appeared to him so false and unpatriotic. In
a letter to Lafayette, written on Christmas day, 1798, he gave the
following brief sketch of the opposition: "A party exists in the
United States, formed by a combination of causes, which opposed the
government in all its measures, and are determined, as all their
conduct evinces, by clogging its wheels indirectly to change the
nature of it, and to subvert the Constitution. The friends of
government, who are anxious to maintain its neutrality and to preserve
the country in peace, and adopt measures to secure these objects, are
charged by them as being monarchists, aristocrats, and infractors of
the Constitution, which according to their interpretation of it would
b